Is social media really destroying democracy? Should Facebook be considered a public utility? How does cryptocurrency affect state sovereignty? And what exactly is surveillance capitalism? For all your political questions about tech, this is The Anti-Dystopians.The Anti-Dystopians is hosted and produced by Alina Utrata. All episodes are freely available, wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Twitter @AntiDystopians.To support the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4To subscribe to the email newsletter, visit: bit.ly/3kuGM5X Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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episode 9: Is Facebook (and Google) a Public Utility?
For this week’s episode, Alina Utrata talks to Josh Simons, a PhD candidate in Government at Harvard University and a Labour candidate for local office in the UK. They discuss Josh’s research — what is machine learning and why is it (always) political? As critical information infrastructure, should Google and Facebook be regulated as democratic utilities? And do we need a whole new understanding of corporations' role in society if we’re going to tackle the tech industry?
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A transcript of this episode is available here.
Mentioned in this podcast
Josh Simons (co-authored by Dipayan Ghosh) on Brookings: Utilities for democracy: Why and how the algorithmic infrastructure of Facebook and Google must be regulated
Virginia Eubanks’s seminal work on Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police and Punish the Poor. Plus a review on the LSE’s blog
Cory Doctorow, How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism
More on the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority and Digital Markets Unit
Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.